# "If you've never stared off into the distance, then, your life is a shame..." -
Counting Crows
On a morning, as I make my way
to work, I journey over the bus and rail bridges that cross the River Tyne between Newcastle and Gateshead - apart from getting a lot more reading done using public transport than if I drove to work, the other curious thing I've like to note as I make the crossing is that most people look to the east, where the majestic Tyne Bridge and Sage Music Centre fill the vista. It seems to be an unconscious reaction (for myself included), but increasingly, with each new day, I've been more interested in looking west, to the empty horizon of the hills and Tyne Valley which stretch out for miles (and where
the old Rocket still stands resolute and defiant, resisting the changes of the modern world around it)...
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| The Aviemore mountains from a Signal Box guesthouse! |
I think this has something to do with me always feeling more comfortable in the countryside, away from the hustle and bustle of city life, and for the fact that I often find being out in wild open spaces inspires me to write the "adventure" tales I love to scribble in my notebooks...
So with this 3rd "Blasts from the Past" post, looking back over the last 5 years that I've kept this online blog, I thought I'd take a glance back across the horizon of the past, over bygone hills and dales and across travelled-on continents, at the times I posted about adventurous holidays and inspiring journeys I've taken that help guide my pen and fingers on the keyboard as I write new stories...
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| The road taken around Europe, Summer 2003... |
Getting a "sense of place" as a writer has always been important to me in whatever fictional tales I'm constructing, and like any true wandering spirit, I do love to travel. One formative journey I draw on a lot in my writing actually pre-dates this blog and it was back in 2003 when travelling around most of western Europe for 2 months that I began collecting and writing in small notebooks, scribbling down historical and cultural curiosities of the different countries I visited and also formulating the "back story" to what was to become my first planned adventure novel, (you can still recap on more of this particular book's development by going to
my Official Writing Homepage and clicking on swirly timey-wimey picture at the bottom of the "Introduction" page...)
It with far-flung travelling and wild adventures in mind that I'm this month working on 2 more revamped pages to
my Main Writing Website - these being "Adventurous Adventure Tales" and "Lit Fic" where coming soon there'll be NEW short stories in Amazing 3-D - expect some dusty treks and wondrous wanderings once these pages are relaunched! (You can keep an eagle-eye out for them via a couple of sprinklings of things you might find down your garden path on
my homepage...)
My sort of writing "motto" since beginning this blog and that I keep in mind as I travel on through life is that
every day is an adventure - every word I put down to create a new story adds to the ongoing adventure of my writing life, and so I guess I'll continue to keep looking west, out to the far horizon each day as cross the Tyne, making my way to
the day job, watching for new inspiration and taking the road less taken - that's surely the ultimate journey worth making...
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| My mind often wanders like a cloud back to Grasmere... |
Before I get too tongue-tied with any further cliches, here's 5 favourite posts from the past 5 years of this online journal that I've blogged about travelling and the great outdoors (and how this has inspired my creative scribbles):
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| " 'Nuf said..." |
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